They’re back. MSNBC’S Matthews, Maddow, O’Donnell, Todd, Ruhle, Geist, Brzeznski and Scarborough, Wallace and the score-keeping Steve Kornacki have returned.

These few, these happy few, this happy band of brothers and sisters of the media who have been at my beck and call these harried hours, are back. Oh, joy. Oh, happy day.

I must in all fairness mention too that Fox’s Carlson, Acuna, Hannity and Banderas, along with the flock of chatterers from CNN, Blitzer, Cuomo and Cooper, are also back from extended Christmas vacations. I know the holidays are a respected time of rest, meditation and contemplation. The weary heart needs rest, yes.

But why leave me here alone without your noisy nourishment?

Did you miss them? Do you even know who they are? Do you even know what I’m talking about? Maybe not. You’re normal, and that’s wonderful.

If you’re not one of the obsessive, compulsive news addicts wired into the passing electronic circus parade, hanging on every word blowing out of those two television screens in your house, you probably don’t know or care about all of this, and you’re luckier than you know.

You have great blood pressure, no eye tics or shaking hands. You don’t have time to read the madman’s next insane tweet, or gasp when you hear that Mueller’s team has been granted six months more of digging. Six months more? Seriously? That’s like having your power go out in the ninth inning of the seventh World Series game. Six months? Democracy is at stake; the future of the world is at stake. Six months? You’re kidding.

I understand. You couldn’t care less that some of us have suffered with the daily flow of serious news being offered by the replacement teams.

I refer to those ambitious and certainly capable lower-level wannabes who went to New York and Washington from East Moline, Illinois, or Ruston, Louisiana, who have been cleaned up and sent up to the big glass-and-neon rooms on the top floor to fill the empty seats of the network’s nabobs, and deliver life and death pronouncements in stuttering, embryonic voices.

But you, dear reader, shivering here on the frozen lip of the upper East Coast, you’ve got a store to manage, an office tied up with new tax laws, a class to teach and homework to check, or a shop full of cars to repair.

For most of you, winter is about snowmobiling, ice skating or just dealing with a dwindling wood pile or oil tank.

There is no such thing for you as “time on your hands.” You’ve got to sit on the mahogany bench tomorrow and sentence someone, put on a white jacket and heal someone.

You have to get up at dawn and go plow somebody’s driveway. I understand.

But for those of us so addicted that we have all the news shows taped for replay, for all of us who huddle in coffee shops and whisper, “Did you hear what Rachel said? Did you know about O’Donnell’s breaking news?”

Or, “Did you hear that our own chosen warrior, Jared Golden, wanted to replace her eminence Nancy Pelosi with someone named Cheri Bustos, née Callahan, from East Moline, Illinois?” Really? In these torrid times of tribulation? Really?

Mention us tonight in your bedtime prayers, those of us with the needles of news stuck in our arms, who write and whisper and shout at glowing screens over our chops and salads. That color burst of letters that scream breaking news is our drug of choice. Pity us. There is no pill to soothe us.

It’s midnight. I’m going to have some Pepto-Bismol with maybe a spill of gin in it. I’m going to calm down. The world isn’t going to end tomorrow. Goodnight. Sweet dreams.

OMG. Did I remember to tape “Morning Joe”?

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.